Visual Arts Center Unveils Masterpiece Painting Project

A version of this article was published in the June 20, 2013 edition of Florida Weekly:  

Liz Hutchinson's rendition on Monet and his Water Lilies

Don’t be surprised if you notice Claude Monet with his paintbrush in hand the next time you drive down Marion Avenue in Punta Gorda.  You’re not hallucinating.  The Visual Arts Center  (VAC) unveiled the first work in its Masterpiece Painting Project in early June:  a reproduction of one of Monet’s Water Lilies paintings.  The work has been mounted on the north side of its building across from Fishermen’s Village.   It is the first of five paintings to be hung over time that will both bring more outdoor art to Punta Gorda, a city known for its murals, and give passersby a hint about what’s going on within the walls of the VAC. 

For the last nine years, the VAC has hosted a Fine Arts Festival in November celebrating the work of famous artists.  Past Festivals have highlighted artists as varied as Toulouse-Lautrec, Georgia O’Keefe, Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci, and Degas.  Each year one of the featured artist’s works has been reproduced by local artists and hung outside the entrance to the VAC to welcome visitors to the Festival.  Both the size of the works—approximately 7’ x 11’—and the quality of the artistry give credence to the term “masterpiece” for these paintings.

Lost Masterpiece -- Toulouse-Lautrec's Jane Avril  and Divan
Janponais created by Suzanne Bowles and Carole Cobb

Last year, the work of Claude Monet provided the theme for the Festival, and Liz Hutchinson was asked to recreate one of his paintings.  Hutchinson was a natural choice as she taught art classes for ten summers with ArtStudy at Monet’s home in Giverny, France.  As Hutchinson painted her rendition of Monet’s Water Lilies in a gallery at the VAC, people asked what would happen to the painting after the Festival.  When she inquired, Hutchinson found out that the masterpiece works that had been so assiduously created in prior years had been painted over and the plywood canvas reused for the next year’s painting.  (The exception was the reproduction of The Creation of Adam which found a home at a local church.) 

This realization led Hutchinson and husband Frank Sperry to mount a campaign to save these works.   The idea of creating an exterior gallery at the VAC was born.   Like all projects, there were a number of hoops to be jumped through before the project could move forward, including obtaining Punta Gorda City Council approval.  And if the Monet masterpiece would be the first work to grace the new gallery, it would have to be repainted using weatherproof acrylic paint and other appropriate materials.  Hutchinson volunteered to re-paint the work if approval was granted. 

    

The City Council approved the project last spring, and Hutchinson got to work.   Earlier this month, a ribbon cutting was held to commemorate the hanging of her rendition of Monet’s Water Lilies.  

Hutchinson’s work on the masterpiece painting project is not done, however.  She volunteered to paint the masterpiece for this year’s Festival as well, which will feature the work of John Singer Sargent.   The painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose has been selected as the masterpiece to be recreated.    Hutchinson is enthusiastic about the choice, having seen the original at the Tate Museum some years ago.  She realized, however, that the dimensions weren’t quite right for the plywood canvas on which the work would be done.  The painting is more or less square, while the canvas is rectangular.  Hutchinson found a photograph of Sargent painting in plein air the year Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was created.  A decision was made to incorporate Sargent into the work.   (Monet’s likeness can similarly be seen in the masterpiece painting already on display.) 

Detail from Sargent's Carnation, Lily,
Lily, Rose reproduced by Liz Hutchinson

In a recent conversation, Hutchinson explained a bit about her process of creating the painting, which will take about six weeks of steady effort.  Using a print of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose as her guide, Hutchinson gridded the canvas into six sections to ensure that the perspective and aspect ratio would be accurate.  Next she drew the painting onto the canvas, a project that took the better part of three days.  Only then was it time to start painting.  The masterpiece won’t be unveiled until the opening of the Festival in November, but it promises to be worth waiting for.

With the conclusion of each year’s Fine Arts Festival, a new painting will be added to the VAC’s outdoor gallery.  Eventually, five masterpiece paintings will be on view.  After five years, the oldest painting will be removed to make room for the latest reproduction.   

The Masterpiece Painting Project will both showcase the talent of our local artists and supplement the great outdoor art that Punta Gorda already offers.   There’s no doubt about it—Punta Gorda’s got art.    

Women Who Want to Be Left Alone: The Affairs of Others and Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

I am in the reading zone (which is a great place to be--it is just too darn hot and humid to be much of anywhere else!)  and just finished two really good books:  The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple. On their face, these books are as different from one another as night and day.  They both, however, feature women who basically would just like to be left alone to lead their lives.  That's enough of a theme for me to work with!

The Affairs of Others  -- I've mentioned this book a couple of times recently as it was one of the Editors' Buzz Books at the recent Book Expo.  From the start of this novel, I was drawn in by Loyd's beautiful writing.  The set-up is fairly simple.  Celia, a young widow, has purchased a brownstone in Brooklyn and rents out the three upper stories.  She has carefully selected the tenants as people who will respect her privacy and permit her to continue to live in her grief-stricken state.  When one of the tenants persuades her to permit a sublet of his apartment while he's out of the country for a few months, the delicate balance of the building shifts.

The story is engrossing and unexpected.  At times it made me uncomfortable.  At times it made me sad.  At times I just wondered what the heck was the problem with this woman.   Why can't she just get on with her life?   (You do find out.) 

At all times, though, I was struck by the power of Loyd's words.  Take, for instance, Celia's recollection of seeing Hope, the proposed sublessee, hugging her son on the street.  Celia crossed the street, feeling that she's intruding on a personal moment, as "[Hope] grabbed him abruptly and hugged him with all of her, as if she were trying to steady him against a mean wind or force something out of him.  That day, I remember I thought sorrow, she's trying to hug his sorrow away and there was no time to lose apparently."  We learn that Hope is going through a divorce after 25 years of marriage.  She says of herself, only half jokingly, "Don't you all know that you are supposed to treat me as if I'm newly widowed?  As if I've been shipwrecked?" 

The Affairs of Others is a debut novel by Loyd, who is herself an editor.  (She was the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine which, as we all know, is oft purchased for its writing.)  It would be interesting to read some of the work that Loyd edited to see if her authors share her lyrical writing style.  The Affairs of Others will be available in stores in August. 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? --  I picked up this laugh out loud funny book at the 2012 Book Expo but only recently got around to reading it.  (My sister recommended the book after reading about my outing to Solomon's Castle.  I couldn't imagine what the connection might be, but it definitely exists.) The story defies easy synopsis but centers around the life of a Seattle family--Elgin, the Microsoft wonk dad, Bea, the precocious 12 year old daughter, and the named Bernadette, the mom who experienced a Huge Hideous Event that resulted in her desire to withdraw from society.  The story is told through a variety of formats, including "FBI documents involving surveillance of Bernadette, emails between Elgin and his administrator, handwritten notes between a woman and her gardener, the same woman's emergency room bill, back-and-forth from a Galer Street School fundraiser about a disastrous brunch, an article about Bernadette's architecture career, and correspondence between Elgin and a psychiatrist."  (I told you the story defies easy description.)

My copy of the book has zillions of flags marking passages that made me erupt in laughter.  There's the memo from the guy hired to run a capital campaign for Galer Street School (where Bea is in the 6th grade) stressing the points he wants to make in bold.  He implores the families to "emancipate themselves from what I am calling Subaru Parent mentality and start thinking more like Mercedes Parents.... When applying to kindergarten, Merceds parents keep their eyes on the prize.... The first stop on this crazy train is Kingergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station."  (In between my snorts of laughter I was congratulating myself on never having had to go through this experience!)

There's Bernadette's email to her virtual assistant bemoaning the overabundance of Craftsman style houses in Seattle.  "It's like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle in a collective trance.  You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won't matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on a lot."  Seattle's love of Chihuly chandeliers garners some contempt from Bernadette as well. "Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They're everywhere, and even if they don't get in your way, you can't help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them."  (Naples also is a big Chihuly area, and I have to admit that I don't share the love.)  The egalitarian, laid-back nature of Seattle's residents also drives Bernadette crazy.  "Nobody here likes me.  The day I got here, I went to Macy's to buy a mattress.  I asked if someone could help me.  'You're not from around here, are you?' the lady said. 'I can tell by your energy.'  What kind of energy was that?  That I asked to be helped by a mattress saleslady in a mattress department?"  (In case you're wondering, we do find out what the Huge Hideous Event was, and it was enough to drive a person a bit batty.)

Author Maria Semple was a writer for the TV shows Mad About You, Ellen, and Arrested Deelopment, so it's no surprise that she is so darn funny.  If you need a good laugh (and who doesn't?), Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is the book for you.

John Singer Sargent Watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Simplon Pass:  Reading 
(1911)

While books were the order of the day on my recent trip to New York, I couldn't miss the opportunity to  visit the Sargent Watercolors exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.  After all, Sargent is the artist whose work will be featured in the Fine Arts Festival at the Visual Arts Center in November.   (Much more about that to come in the months ahead.)   It is a gorgeous show comprised of 93 watercolors from the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.      

The show was broken into ten different themes.  I seem to have come away with a list of only nine:  Italian Villas and their Gardens, Venice, Portraits at Hand, Bedouin Encounter, Watercraft, Dolce Far Niente ("sweet doing nothing"), Alpine Heights, Sunlight on Stone, and Quarry.   I clearly was too excited about the show to focus on my reportage!  Each portion of the show seemed to be more beautiful than the last.  In fact, I can't remember going to an exhibit and being taken with so many of the paintings.

La Biancheria (1910)

Sargent's watercolors have an amazing translucence and luminosity.  His ability to give white objects (both in pieces like this stunning painting of laundry hung out to dry and his scenes from Italian Carrara marble quarries) so much color and depth was only one of my take-aways from the show.

A Tramp (1904)

Sargent is well-known for his gorgeous oil paintings of society figures.  (Think Portrait of Madame X, probably his most well-known work.)  Many of these portraits were commissioned works.  In contrast, Sargent's watercolor portraits feature people Sargent came into casual contact with (like this well-heeled "tramp") and apparently provided a welcome break for him from the pressures of pleasing his clientele.  Sargent is quoted in Stanley Olson's book on the artist as having said, "Painting a portrait would be quite amusing if one were not forced to talk while working...What a nuisance having to entertain the sitter..."   No such niceties were required when he was doing portraits of subjects "at hand."

La Riva (1903-1904)

Sargent traveled extensively throughout his life, but it was Venice that he called his "fountain of youth."  He said that he felt his art was revitalized just by being in the beautiful city.  While a separate portion of the show featured Sargent's interest in watercraft, you can see his love of the water and boats in his Venetian paintings as well.  Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, then, to learn that Sargent spent some time in his later life in Florida, working primarily in watercolor.  I in fact was surprised to learn this, though, and am looking forward to learning more about his time here during the Fine Arts Festival.

Bedouins (1905)

I would be remiss not to mention Sargent's Bedouin paintings, which are lush and exotic.  Almost all of the Sargent watercolors in the Brooklyn Museum of Art's collection were part of his 1909 exhibit that debuted his watercolor work.  Sargent called his Bedouins the "piece de resistance" of the 1909 show.  These works were inspired both by his travels--this time to the Middle East--and by one of his favorite books, Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Montagu Doughty.

The aptly named
Simplon Pass:  The Lesson (1911)

One of the unique features of the show was its efforts to educate viewers about Sargent's artistic techniques.  This focus was evident in both the descriptions of the works (for instance, the commentary about La Biancheria, shown above, explains that it was painted on wet sheets of white paper) and in education stations throughout the exhibit that explored topics like the materials that Sargent used and the extent of his preliminary drawings for the works.  (I learned that an infrared inspection of his work A Tramp, shown above, revealed no underdrawing or preliminary sketch beneath the paint.)  There were pictures of the types of brushes he used and an explanation of the magnification process used to study where paint was removed from works and his individual brush strokes.  The Museum's website even includes a Q&A in which Toni Owen, senior paper conservator, responds to questions that visitors to the Museum raise about Sargent's techniques.  http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ask/forum/post.php?forum=10  As a non-artist, I found the information fascinating.  I suspect that an artist visiting the show would come away both with an even greater appreciation of Sargent's watercolors and a few tricks of the trade to try when she gets back to her canvas.

The Sargent Watercolors show will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art through July 18th.  Get there if you can!  It is truly a beautiful show.  Having gotten a taste of Sargent's work, I'm more excited than ever about the Fine Arts Festival in November.  Make sure to join us if you're in this neck of the woods!

Reporting from Book Central

The calm before the storm--Wendi and I waiting
for the gates to open at the Book Expo 

After three days of rushing and waiting and carrying and sorting at BEA, I am now living amidst piles of books.  The official count is 142 additions to my library--and I left at least half as many behind in the shipping area that I picked up along the way for consideration.  I draw the line at shipping two boxes of books home.  (At a cost of $75 per box, it's well worth it but I try not to go too crazy.)  Now the question comes:  What to do with all these books???

Some of the books were selected with a particular recipient in mind.  Andrea got a signed copy of Larry Kane's When They Were Boys, a book about the Beatles.  (She is a Beatles fan from way back.  Once when we were in London we went on a great Beatles walking tour, but that's a story for another day.)   Jay got a copy of The Billionaire and the Mechanic:  How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The Americas Cup.  (How fitting that as I write this he's crewing on an offshore race from Baltimore to Newport.  There's a reason I refer to him now as Popeye the Sailor Man.)  And my family will share the loads of thrillers that I came home with.

Having had a chance to survey my new reading material, I thought I'd share a few titles that I'm looking forward to reading.

 --This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett.  Patchett's Bel Canto is one of my favorite books of all time. so I am always excited when I hear that she has a new book out   Her latest work is a collection of personal essays on topics ranging from her marriages to her childhood to opening a bookstore to writing.  I'm not quite sure what to expect, but that's half the fun.

--The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.  Simon & Schuster was pushing The Rosie Project hard this year at BEA.  They even had an ice cream social to celebrate the book.  (Yes, in addition to all the books, there are sometimes eating and drinking opportunities.  I quite enjoyed my Haagen Dazs ice cream bar!)   This debut novel tells the story of Don, a genetics professor who, while brilliant, is lacking in social skills.  He comes up with the idea of engaging in a scientific experiment of sorts to find a mate which he calls the Wife Project.   Rosie is on a quest of her own as she looks for her biological father. (You got it--the Father Project.)   Don and Rosie's paths cross and I'm thinking that they are going to end up living happily ever after.  I've been wrong before, though, especially when it comes to the happily ever after part.

--The Center of the World by Thomas van Essen.  This novel alternates between two stories.  The first involves British painter J.M.W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers; the second involves the discovery of a powerful painting by Turner called "The Center of the World" which is a "mesmerizing and unsettling" portrait of Helen of Troy that is wildly erotic.  Again, I have no idea what to expect but I like the art angle and, if well done, I enjoy the alternating story structure.

--Want Not by Jonathan Miles.  I didn't read Miles' Dear American Airlines but it got rave reviews.  Since I am apparently too lazy to get to the library to check it out, I'll start with Miles' second book instead.  It tells the tale of a "freegan couple living off the grid in Manhattan, a once-prominent linguist struggling with midlife and a NJ debt collection magnate with a second chance at getting things right."  (In case you're wondering, "freegans" are basically dumpster divers.  I had to look it up.)  I am highly curious how Miles will bring these disparate characters together into a cohesive story about looking for fulfillment.

--Local Souls by Allan Gurganus.  Again, I didn't read Gurganus' prior book Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (which came out ten years ago--time flies!)  Local Souls is "three linked, darkly funny novellas...charting the old habits--adultery, obsession, incest--still at large in his New South." I am intrigued mostly because Gurganus was signing at BEA and he is an old Southern gentleman, complete with a seersucker suit and a hat.  He apparently has some dark thoughts rattling around in that brain of his, though.  Appearances can be deceiving.

In the meantime, I've finished Laura Lippman's When She Was Good (now out in paperback), and it was a smart quick read about a suburban madam.  And I'm halfway through The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd, which is a beautifully written story of the interwoven lives of a landlady and her tenants in a Brooklyn brownstone.  So many books, so little time!

Thriller Writers Abound at 2013 Book Expo

The first day of Book Expo America (BEA to those in the know) is always a bit stressful.  My friend Wendi approaches the event like a military operation.  She does extensive research and prepares spreadsheets setting out where she wants to be when.  (Some serious cloning would be required to do it all.)  While I also do some research, when I start talking to Wendi about what's going to be happening, I generally end up feeling like a kid who turns up in class having studied for the wrong test.  I was quite proud of myself when I realized before she did that author Sue Grafton would be signing the galley of her latest book, W is for Wasted, at 10:00 on Thursday morning.  Don’t  worry, though.  By the time we arrived at the Javits Center, the signing had been added to Wendi’s spreadsheet, a copy of which was clutched in my hands. 

After the first frantic rush through the convention center grabbing the galleys that were set out for the taking (an experience I always liken to running with the bulls in Pamplona), I dumped my books in the shipping area and consulted my list to decide where to go next.  There is a lot of strategy involved in getting the books that you are most interested in coming home with.  (This is the reason to do your homework before you arrive.)  In addition to the piles of galleys, there are timed galley give-aways and signings both in the booths of the larger publishing houses and in the autographing area.  I knew I wanted the Sue Grafton book but there was also a galley give-away for Amy Tan’s new book at 10:00 and Richard North Patterson would be signing his latest book at 10:30.   What to do? 

Sue Grafton

It’s a bit of a blur but to the best of my recollection I waited impatiently in line for Amy Tan’s Valley of Amazement and then headed over to meet Sue Grafton.  As you can see by this picture, she is quite lovely and was one of an increasing number of authors who was shaking hands with the readers as they came through the line.  (Happily, I am not a germaphobe.)

Then I was off to get the Richard North Patterson book, Loss of Innocence.   He was also quite engaging and didn’t take offense when the guy in front of me “confessed” that he had never read any of his books.  I told him that he would be stocking up after he read his first one (figuring it never hurts to flatter the author a bit) and was rewarded with a smile from Patterson.  He confided that he is really proud of this book.  (Surprisingly, no author told me that they didn’t think their latest book was particularly good.)  Then I was off.

The day went on and before I knew it it was time to get on line for Scott Turow’s latest book Identical.  Of course, I’ve been a big Scott Turow fan since I read his book One L in preparation for my stint at Harvard Law School.  (It wasn’t quite as scary as he made it out to be.)   His publisher took the tack of handing the books out to people on line for the signing well before they arrived at the desk.  The bad devil on my shoulder made me take the book and run rather than wait for his signature.  I did, however, get a nice shot of him signing for someone else.

Linda Fairstein

Throughout the three day event, there were loads of other thriller writers signing.  The line for David Baldacci signing The Hit (out this week) was so long that I knew I didn’t have the stamina to wait it out.  Nelson Demille was signing an excerpt—the first six chapters of his newest work—so I passed him up as well.  Laura Lippman was promoting the paperback publication of And When She Was Good.  (My friend Lee overheard her apologetically saying she wouldn’t have been at BEA without a new book out but she was in town anyway and the Mystery Writers Association prevailed upon her.  Hey, I’m not above taking a copy of an older book that I haven’t had a chance to read yet.)   I also picked up copies of the latest from former prosecutors Linda Fairstein and Marcia Clark.

Jeffrey Deaver

The last day of BEA historically has been somewhat quiet with fewer authors signing and publishers packing up their booths.  Wendi and I generally have gone just for a couple of hours to scour the floor for galleys that we somehow missed over the prior two days.  Not so this year with the introduction of the “power reader” one day pass.  Over 2000 consumers made their way onto the floor when the doors opened at 9, and we watched them walk around wide-eyed like kids in a candy store.  (Just to back pedal a bit, BEA is geared towards bookstore owners and librarians who publishers hope will fall in love with their books and purchase them in huge quantities.  Educators—even more or less faux educators like me—are also welcome to ante up their admission fee and attend the event.)   So Saturday was a bit busier than usual, and the schedule included a signing by Jeffrey Deaver, whose Lincoln Rhyme character is one of my favorites.  I was excited to get a copy of his latest, The Kill Room, and also to hear that another movie is in the works.  (Apparently, there has been litigation over the foreign rights to the Lincoln Rhyme character since the movie The Bone Collector starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie came out in 1999.  He doesn’t know if Washington will be reprising his role, but it’s something to look forward to either way.)  

Since I’m still waiting for the two boxes of books that I shipped to arrive, I can’t give you an accurate count of how many books I brought home with me or how many of those books are thrillers.   My off-the-cuff estimate is 125 books in total, at least 30 of which fall into the thriller genre.  If I'm a little jumpy the next time you see me, you’ll know why. 

Editors' Buzz Books at 2013 Book Expo

After 362 days of anticipation, Book Expo 2013 had finally arrived.  Wendi and I headed over to the Javits Center last Wednesday afternoon to hear editors from six publishing houses promote books that they hope to be the big hits of the season.  In prior years, books such as Emma Donoghue's Room and Chad Harbach's Art of Fielding have made the panel, so each year I look forward to hearing the "buzz" about the books that have been chosen.   I don't know what the selection process involves, but it was clear from the outset that this year's judges were in the mood for some intense reading.

The lead-off book was Hitler's Furies:  German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower (publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).  In telling the stories of 13 women who were witnesses, accomplices, or killers in the "wild east" of Hitler's empire (jurisdictions such as Poland, Belarus, Latvia and the Ukraine), Lower exposes the fact that women were active participants during the perpetration of Hitler's atrocities in roles other than that of concentration camp guards.  Lower did extensive research for her book over a period of 20 years, reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts containing the testimony of female witnesses in war crime trials held following WWII.  (The transcripts only became available following the fall of the Soviet Union.)  While I appreciate that this is an important subject, Hitler's Furies is NOT going to make it to my bedside table.

Facades:  A Novel, a debut novel by Eric Lundgren (publisher Overlook Press), was next up.  Facades tells the tale of a man's search for his wife, a celebrated opera singer, who mysteriously disappears.  It is a layered detective story about a man looking both for his wife and for himself in an imaginary city with characteristics of Kafka's Prague and Batman's Gotham City.   (They pretty much lost me there!)  Lundgren wrote this book several years ago and shopped it around without success.  He put it in a drawer and went to work as a librarian.  The editor read the book four years ago but was not able to persuade her then employer to pull the trigger on it.  Facades was the first book that she has brought to print in her new role at Overlook.  She didn't share whether Lundgren has given up his day job.

Amy Grace Loyd's Affairs of Others (publisher Picador USA) sounds like a reminder of why I'm glad I no longer live in a high rise in the city.  It's the story of Celia, the landlord of an apartment  building in New York who is still grieving the loss of her husband five years after his death.  She says, "American life asks us to engage in an act of triumphant recovery at all times or get out of the way.  I have been happy to get out of the way."  After years of maintaining a distance from her tenants, Celia becomes involved in their lives when a new tenant moves in with a complicated set of problems that Celia can't ignore.  Loyd is an editor herself and at first blush looks to be a strong writer.   This is one buzz book that I will read.

The panel turned back to non-fiction with Five Days at Memorial:  Life and Death in a Storm Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink (publisher Crown Publishing Group).  Fink is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who trained as a physician and has spent time as a relief worker in disaster and conflict zones. Who better to report on the events resulting in 45 patient deaths (some by lethal injection) at New Orleans' Memorial Hospital following Hurricane Katrina?  The book is divided into two sections addressing the storm and its aftermath and the investigation and trial, respectively.  Fink's writing style looks eminently readable for people who are interested in learning more about this story.

Knocking on Heaven's Door:  The Path to a Better Way of Death by Katy Butler (publisher Scribner) was perhaps the most depressing sounding book of the day (which is saying quite a bit).   Butler is a science reporter for the New York Times, and the book is an extension of an article published in the Time in 2010 about the deaths of her parents.  (The article was one of the most emailed NYT articles of the year and can be read at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).  Butler's father died several years after suffering a stroke and, later, having a pacemaker implanted.  It was an expensive process, both in dollars and in emotional wear and tear.  In the article, Butler says, "His stroke devastated two lives.  The day before, my mother was an upper-middle-class housewife who practiced calligraphy in her spare time.  Afterward, she was one of tens of millions of Americans...who help care for an older family member."  The "medical conservatism" that was exercised on her father (who had dementia in addition to other medical issues) is contrasted with the relatively swift death of her mother, who made a choice to deny life-extending treatment when she was diagnosed at the age of 84 with heart disease.  The book raises questions of care versus cure that most of us will likely be forced to face with respect to ourselves and/or our loved ones.   Not a light or easy read, but certainly a thought-provoking one.

The final book was yet another non-fiction work entitled All Joy and No Fun:  The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (publisher Harper Collins).   This book grew from an article written by Senior on the same topic that was published three years ago in New York Magazine (http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/).   (I love the quote in the article about someone who, while visiting a children's museum with their kid, said it was "a nice place, but what it really needs is a bar".)  The book is being characterized as a follow-on to the classic What to Expect When You're Expecting (although the editor opined that if every couple considering parenthood read this book first, there would probably be fewer children in the world).  An odd selection.

With that, we were released from the conference room to grab galleys of the books that had been buzzed and head home to develop our plan of attack for our first full day at the Book Expo.  Next up:  Thriller Authors Abound.